Flying miles and miles above the Middle East, I sat watching Madagascar 3. The movie plot line is nothing spectacular yet a scene touched me so deeply by my Father.
The story surrounds the four animal friends from a New York Zoo trying to find their way home, along the way making friends with an animal circus. Upon finally arriving at the zoo the animals find a mural of Africa. Each animal is struck by how little justice the mural gives to Africa. One after the other says how much more beautiful Africa is in reality. Then a hippo comments on how she never realized the walls around her. And in a pivotal moment the animal that wanted to leave the Zoo in the first movie states, "I wish I never would have left." And each animal turns to him shocked as he continues, "because then I wouldn't be so sad right now." The animals go on to say how they aren't the animals who once lived in a zoo, that this no longer felt like home.
So many truths bombarded me.
First, I couldn't shake the thought that this would be me when I returned. My generation of American Christians were missing something. Our mural of the Gospel is lacking, not quite as beautiful as the real thing. Most people walk by without a second glance, but when you are dependent on the Promise then it looks so different. Why aren't we living differently to show the Gospel in all it's beauty?
The walls we have built around us in regards to our fellow brothers and sisters are close to suffocating us. Just as the hippo said she didn't even know they were there. We don't either. We go to church and sit next to hundreds of people and never wonder if the message touched them in the depths of their spirits, but instead wonder if they noticed the conviction we felt and if someone knew would we no longer be "the perfect little Christian". Walls suffocating us from being honest.
As the zebra spoke of wishing he had never left, fear flooded me. What if I never want to live in the States again? Just recently, God revealed my calling to me. A calling to be an alarm clock to the sleeping generation of Christians. The complacent, the weary, the distracted American Christians. So doubt flooded me at this point. Just as the animals said I am no longer the girl I started as on this journey and I will be a different woman when I return. What if the Zoo no longer satisfies me? What if I wish I never would have left and regretted it?
That's the exciting part. He promised me I would be sad at the state of America. He sent me away from the States to wake me. An alarm clock can't wake someone up if the alarm clock is still sleeping. If I had not left the States; the sadness, the heartbreak at the state of my generations Christianity would not have been awakened.
I'm guaranteed that the States will no longer feel like home. But it was never supposed to. My home is in Heaven with my Father and Savior. I would never wish it would be elsewhere. And I want to show American Christians that its not their home either.
